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SITE MOVED:Sir Humphrey's has moved

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Poles bring competition to Sweden

Some enterprising soul has spotted a niche and moved in in a bare faced display of capitalist piggery. There are lots of unemployed dentists in Poland. Loads of Swedes can't afford the public health dentistry. Poles can now work in Sweden. Solution? Import a few Polish dentists, set up a clinic in Stockholm, pay them a decent salary but less than that made by the public health dentists and certainly a whole lot more than being unemployed in Poland. Charge half the price of the public health system and watch the happy punters flock in, even though it's mostly all done in English.

"They earn less than Swedish dentists," said Santesson, refusing to give any more details other than confirming that they earned more than the average Swedish wage of 23,600 kronor per month [roughly NZ$60,000 per year].

"They are absolutely not underpaid but the exact wage is my business secret," he told Dagens Nyheter.

The clinic's Polish dentists, of which there are four men and six women, say they were attracted by the money as well as the opportunity for experience they could not have gained at home.

"It's fun to work in a modern clinic in a big city," said chief dentist Wioleta Waszek.

But who isn't happy? Only those bloated fatcat unionists missing out on their dues,

But while the patients and the dentists are happy, the trade union organisation LO, which recently supported a blockade of a building site in Vaxholm because it was using cheaper labour from Latvia, expressed concern.